Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama's brother, poses with Joshua Green, 19 years old, during a book signing after Robinson speaks about his book, "A Game of Character" at Dominican College in San Rafael, Calif., on Tuesday, April 27, 2010.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama's brother, poses with Joshua Green,...

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Craig Robinson (right), Michelle Obama's brother, after speaking about a book he's written, "A Game of Character" at Conlan Recreational Center in Dominican College in San Rafael, Calif., on Tuesday, April 27, 2010. Robinson is currently a men's basketball coach at Oregon State.

Books by college basketball coaches tend to be either motivational self-help guides or memoirs that end on a stepladder with the snipping of the nets after the NCAA championship. Craig Robinson's book reaches a climax with a presidential election.

He writes about basking in the reflected glory of his brother-in-law, President Obama. Two days after the inauguration, the Oregon State coach received a spontaneous ovation before a game in Berkeley, a unique experience for an opposing coach. The reception, he writes, left him "so proud and choked up that I had to really work to hold it together."

At lunch on Nob Hill, he admitted with a chuckle that the site of the game was fortuitous. He might have been greeted less warmly in, say, Arizona. But as one of the chapters in his book says, "Luck is just another word for hard work."

Writing your autobiography after just four years as a head coach might be considered presumptuous, but Robinson has an interesting story to tell, mostly off the court. He stands 6-foot-6 and bears a strong resemblance to his sister, Michelle Obama. Ivy League-educated, he spent 14 years in the financial world before becoming a coach. There's a dictionary in the locker room in case his players don't understand his longer words.

At Oregon State, as they say in his extended family, he brought about change. After two years at Brown, he inherited a team in Corvallis that had gone 6-25 (0-18 in the Pac-10) the previous season. He led the Beavers to 18 wins in 2008-09, one of the best turnarounds in the country.

Last season the team's fortunes ebbed and flowed, much like the Obama administration. The 14-18 Beavers beat Cal, the regular-season Pac-10 champion, by 16, won at Arizona for the first time in 27 years and snapped a 16-game losing streak at Oregon's McArthur Court. They also were pounded by a mediocre Seattle team at home - by 51 points. "We were too big for our britches," he said.

The president called Robinson not only after the big wins, but also to commiserate after the Seattle game, the low point of the season. He also called him recently on Robinson's 48th birthday.

But, no, he didn't enlist Robinson's help in putting together his NCAA tournament brackets. "We can't do pools," Robinson said. "It's considered a form of gambling."

Robinson admitted the past couple of years have been a whirlwind ride. He campaigned for Obama in several states. He spoke at the Democratic National Convention to introduce his sister, Michelle Obama.

In his book, "A Game of Character," Robinson recounts a pickup basketball game he arranged - at Michelle's behest - to see if her boyfriend could meet the family's stringent character requirements. Naturally, Obama did, and showed some basketball skills as well.

The theme of the book is the connection between basketball and the values that Robinson and his sister were taught by their tireless parents on Chicago's South Side. Their late father, Fraser, never missed a day of work at a water filtration plant, even though he had multiple sclerosis.

Craig played for Pete Carril at Princeton and was two-time Ivy League Player of the Year. Michelle was two years behind him at Princeton. In his book, Robinson calls his sister "one of the most fiercely intelligent" people he's ever met.

That doesn't mean she someday might become a political candidate like Hillary Rodham Clinton. "She's not out of that mold," he said. "You won't see her running for anything."

Robinson said he entered coaching because he felt unfulfilled in the financial world. As an assistant at Northwestern, he made a tenth of what he used to make as a bond trader. During his book tour, he was asked by Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert how he could consider himself successful in the financial world "when you haven't pillaged through pension funds."

Robinson replied, "I just wasn't good enough."

Taking a more serious tone with The Chronicle, he said, "Even with all the stuff that people in the financial world are going through, it's still more secure than coaching. As much as I want to talk about character and graduating players, if you don't win at this level, you're going to be fired."

Asked how much cheating is going on, he said, "More than I thought before I got into the business."